Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 22:34:20 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Nils Holland" <nils@tisys.org>, "Brett Glass" <brett@lariat.org> Cc: "Paul Robinson" <paul@akita.co.uk>, "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <003a01c16368$67667100$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20011101214159.C27349-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Nils Holland >Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 12:55 PM >To: Brett Glass >Cc: Paul Robinson; Andrew C. Hornback; chat@FreeBSD.ORG; >advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: NatWest? no thanks > > >On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Brett Glass wrote: > >> At 12:10 PM 11/1/2001, Nils Holland wrote: >> >> >Speaking neither for the FreeBSD Project, nor for the OSS movement, I'd >> >really like to ask if we really *want* mass acceptance? >> >> Yes. > >I love it when people try to minimize my bandwidth costs by sending short >and precise answers... > > >My original statement may have sounded a little strange, but I still think >that we're dealing with an operating system for a more advanced class of >computer users. Everyone can join that advanced class at their free will. >But no one can expect icons and strange comic-creatures in animated >widnows telling them how to use the disklabel command (yes, this is a >reference to this strange help system introduced by MS in Office 97 and >up). > I really don't think we have to worry about this happening. There is a curve in operation, you see. The X axis is number of installs. The y axis is support demands on developer time. As X grows the curve ramps up very rapidy. Once you hit 50% of market share the support demands on time have consumed 100% of developers time and all development on the software ceases because everyone who is the least bit knowledgeable is too busy answering questions from people that don't know anything. Commercial software packages (like Windows) are able to handle this several ways. First they simply allow lots of bugs in the product. Second they keep removing knobs, switches and other settings mechanism to dumb down the software so that there's less support calls. Last, because they charge money for support, this pushes a lot of the bonehead questions off since now people have to pay for not reading the instructions. As the installed base expands they simply raise the prices for bonehead support (note that Microsoft has long had a policy of NOT charging for support issues that are related to bugs in Windows, those support questions comprise less than 1% of the questions posed to their tech support) until equilibrim is reached again. With free software, because the number of knobs and switches available to be selected, I don't believe that it would be possible to support more than 50% of the market because every setting opportunity increases the number of potential support calls. Look at DNS - under Microsoft it's a simple GUI that has few selections available and doesen't let the user do much. Under UNIX it's a config file that can be written in shorthand, longhand, or a mix and you can imagine that a typical dumb user support call on a DNS zone file problem would probably chew up 5 times the amount of support time for UNIX as the platform vs NT. That's a huge phone bank staffed with people that need to feed themselves and free software doesen't have the revenue stream to support an entire industry of people that do nothing other than read the instructions to morons who pick up the phone and call instead of cracking the instruction manual. Look at cow manure to see what I mean. You would think that of all the things that morons would NOT make phone calls about, manure would be at the top of the list. But the companies that sell it have entire webpages devoted to application instructions and everything else about crap. Now, if the unwashed masses cannot even be trusted to figure out how to spread cow shit around their gardens without hand-holding, how do you expect to get them going with FreeBSD?!?! Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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